Pioneer Lodge No. 82

Trestle Board

3901 W. Pioneer Road, Phoenix, 85086 – Stated Meeting 3^rd Monday of each Month

Secretary, Michael Deapen, Phone: 602-618-7116, FAX: 623-486-7746

Mailing Address: 6134 W Columbine, Glendale, AZ 85304

Volume 1 December 2005Issue Number 3

From the East

The audience is seated and the house lights are dimming and the curtain is going up on the act 2 of Pioneer Lodge #82.

My brothers, we are fortunate to be a part of a rare breed of masons.

We are the organizers of a new Masonic lodge while other
existing lodges are going out of business. Our lodge is quite different from our brother lodges. We revert back to a time period when our living was much more relaxed and
perhaps masonry was more fun.

Today’s Masonry is very formal yesterday masonry was very relaxed and informal. We like being of the old school.

I hope we can extend our Masonic family to our ladies and our girls and boys organizations. My best wishes to all for a wonderful holiday seasons.
C.J. Smith Jr., Worshipful Master

From the West

Brothers the year is nearly over; as always it flies by and you wonder were the year has gone. We have had our very first election of officers as Pioneer Lodge No. 82, and we elected four new members. It is my hope that we will continue to bring in new members. As the sun rises to open and adorn the day, so begins a new year, full of hopes and dreams, New Year's resolutions, Masonic aspects and traveling on the rode in search of further light in Masonry. I would like to personally thank the brethren for their support and trust in electing me master, as we are taught in the first degree "In whom do you place your trust? Your trust being in god, your trust is well founded." Brethren I will do all that I can to keep your trust inviolate.

Our Officers line will be as follows: Worshipful Master - Chris Smith, Senior Warden - Ed Barron, Junior Warden - Danny Belford, Treasurer - Bryan Cooper-Keeble, Secretary - Jack Melin, Senior Deacon - Jamie Seely, Junior Deacon. Philip Kundin, Marshall - Chico Sanchez, Chaplin - Ron Kinmann, and the Tyler - Ron VanSteenwyk, Senior Steward – Joshua VanSteenwyk, and Junior Steward will be Jim Boniface Jr.. Jamie Seely has offered to be Chairmen of Social Committee. Others additions will be announced as we proceed through then year.

I wish all the Brothers and their families a Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Also, I look forward to seeing all of you at the installation on Saturday, December 17th at 11am. Following the installation lunch will be provided at the Pioneer Restaurant.

From the South

Standards and Expectations

In the not too distant past and for the centuries that preceded it, our illustrious Fraternity could boast its’ leaders were prominent local businessmen, political heads & the civic cornerstones of the community. Some could say, if you had succeeded in life then you would obviously succeed in your Lodge.

Would it then be a case of the good ol’ boys network keeping the power and prestige in the vest pockets of a few, or was it more likely those within the numerous spheres of influence were those who had demonstrated the greatest zeal for achievement? Were they rewarded in the Lodge for their status in the community or were they rewarded in the community for their accomplishments in the Lodge?

Probably a little of each. But, the foundation for success in either venue would be the personal desire for excellence, both on and off the respective fields. The motivations that compel us to choose industry or sloth, self-discipline or excuse making, fortitude or cowardice, dedication or dodge.

To place yourself under the most stringent standards requires not only aspiration, but the determination to excel to your greatest potential. Sometimes this objective is internal with the individual, more often though it is the external pressure exerted by the environment of peers, competition and expectations. EXPECTATIONS!

When did we toss away our expectations? For centuries, Freemasons taught and learned the work from mouth to ear. To ascend to the ranks of an elected Office in a Lodge required proficiency in every word to the satisfaction of all those, who had themselves accepted the challenge to dedicate their minds and labors to “Mastering” the work.

They did this to ensure the perpetuation of the Craft. From mouth to ear, verbatim, repeated as exactly as humanly possible so the secrets of Freemasonry could never die. As long as one man possessed the work, he could teach it to thousands.

No bonfire could erase the record, no sword could slash out the tongue, no army could take away the breath of the Fraternity, as long as one man could teach the work. Because he had Mastered it.

We’ve all heard, “I can’t learn that Charge or Lecture or character part, because WB A.B. does it and it would break his heart to take it away from him!” proclaimed a thousand fold times. Is this a statement of pure compassion or is it merely an opportunity to escape responsibility? Also, the argument used to abolish the catechism as if it was a deterrent to membership, because “It is too hard!” Even though millions of men had mastered it as a prerequisite to advancement for hundreds of years!

How is it, so many of our predecessors mastered the catechism and then the work without fail? Perhaps, the expectations of all of those who had gone that way before, gave them clear evidence that even though it is difficult, it can be done. Perhaps, they realized the benefits far outweighed the effort. Perhaps, they thought more highly of themselves and of others than most do today. Perhaps, they sought to be accomplished in something because earning an apron is more important than simply wearing an apron.

Fraternally,

Ed Barron, Junior Warden ecbfam@msn.com

From The Quill of the Secretary

Officially, our Lodge will be six months old in January 2006. We are blessed with a great many talented Brothers who are capable of doing great things. And most of us joined this Lodge because we believe in perpetuating Freemasonry, and partly because we wanted to experience something new in a traditional fraternity. However, this includes breaking away from the white gloves and tuxedo and business suit formalities normally associated with most Masonic Lodges. We will continue to be traditional with our ritual, and our degree work. Other than that we are simply going to have fun in our effort to Initiate, Pass and Raise good men in our Lodge to the end that they might become better men in our communities. How are we going to do this?

The Worshipful Master is going to ask our members about their specific interests. Every one of us has something to offer or we would not have become members of this fledgling Lodge. We need to offer our support to the Master in order for us to have an even chance of successful growth and development. By advertising in the local newspapers to encourage non-Masons to join our Craft can be a start. We can call on “Out of State Masons” living in our area to encourage them to join our Lodge. We can involve the Anthem Public Schools System in our established Public Schools Programs (Bikes for Books, Essay Contest, Cookouts for their Teacher’s Conference meetings with parents, and the Kid’s in Crisis ongoing program sponsored by the Arizona Masonic Foundation for Children). Because of our close association with the Pioneer Museum, perhaps we can offer some assistance to them in a meaningful way. And there must be other areas of interest our members can perpetuate, but all of these require men to participate on various committees, and we need leaders to step forward to take the initiative in committee work.

Several members have suggested that we meet more often for social gatherings, either at the Restaurant and Bar or some other place just to have some camaraderie and good wholesome fun. We need to involve ourselves lest we lose interest in the very reasons we joined this Lodge. It’s our future, and we need to start building that edifice not made with stone…

The Master has instructed me to have Name Badges made for all our members. This is in the works, and I assure you that they will be different from any you have seen. The initial design for our badges was sent to the Grand Master to ask his approval for the rendition of the square and Compasses offered by Jim Boniface. The Grand Master rejected the use of pistols for compasses, but did make suggestions as to other ideas. So it’s back to the drawing board, and Brother Jim has agreed to take another look at to see what he can come up with.

Dues Notice: On other matters, it’s time for us to pay our Dues. The amount is $66.00 for the 2006 year for our Pioneer Lodge, and they are due and payable January 1, 2006. Consider this your notice because no bills will be issued to members; please submit you dues to the Secretary, made payable to Pioneer Lodge No. 82. Thank you.

Investigations It is our obligation to serve on an “Investigation Committee” when asked to do so. It can also be a pleasure to ourselves, and an eye-opener to the prospect who has applied for membership in our Lodge or Fraternity. The function of the investigation is to get acquainted with the prospect, and to obtain enough information about him that we can report back to the Master of the Lodge as to whether or not he is worthy of being a member of our Craft or Lodge. You will be provided with a simple form that must be filled out, signed and returned only to Master. Brothers, please make every effort to participate when asked to serve on one of these “Investigation Committees”.

Worshipful Master, C.J. Smith, is asking for volunteers to chair several committees. For a start they should include the following:

Most people missed the death of Wyatt Earp, a fact that probably irritated him considerably.

It was 1929, and the American scene was a pretty frantic thing. The stock market crashed, Babe Ruth hit his 500th home run and Gary Cooper stalked tall and grim across the silver screen as The Virginian. Al Capone was running his crime empire from a Philadelphia prison cell, and more than 32,000 speakeasies in New York City celebrated the national commitment to the Volstead Act.

In the midst of that cacophony, the quiet death of an old man in Los Angeles was hardly noticed. Ironically, many people thought he had been dead for years. Marshal Wyatt Earp belonged to the old West--not the new, after all.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, lawman, sportsman, bunco artist, gambler and gunfighter, died on Jan. 13, 1929--one of the last of the nearly mythical Westerners who lived long enough to watch the Old West give way to the Wild West of Hollywood. He even helped it along. At the time of his death, he was trying to sell producers on the idea of a film about, well, Wyatt Earp.

Obviously, the idea caught on. Watching actor Kurt Russell, outfitted in Earp's flowing black mustache and trademark black coat, stalk down the streets of a cinematic Tombstone in the movie of that name or a Kevin Costner standing in the dusty street, it's easy to forget that the real Earp died only 75 years ago. And that he had a vested interest in how history would remember him.

The legendary marshal and a variety of other lawmen, outlaws and cowboys not only lived the reality of the Old West, they lived long enough to turn their stories, tall tales and out-and-out bald-faced lies into the Wild West of Hollywood myth--and they did it with a perfectly straight face.

The newspaper editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance explained the process. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," he said. In their final years, the old-timers spent their time creating legends.

One of the most successful in the legend business was Col. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the Last of the Great Scouts (self-proclaimed but still reasonably accurate). Cody went to the Happy Hunting Grounds in 1917, but not before he tried to correct a few historic oversights on film.

Of course, Cody had been in entertainment for years. As early as 1872, he was starring in stage plays. In 1873, he joined up with Wild Bill Hickok and Texas Jack Omohundro to produce Scouts of the Plains. Thirty years later, his famed Wild West Show and Congress of Rough Riders of the World challenged the Ringlings for their motto--the Greatest Show on Earth.

It's not surprising that in the last years of his life, Buffalo Bill turned to film, both in front of and behind the camera. In 1913, the Col. W.F. Cody Historical Picture Company began production on a "splendid series of grand historical films." The series would depict the opening of the West, and include famous episodes from Cody's life on the plains. One, filmed on the Wounded Knee battlefield, would be "the greatest film ever made, a lasting pictorial history of those early campaigns to hand down to posterity." It would also, of course, polish up those rough spots that history hadn't scripted quite as well as it might have.

Cody was a showman, and a favorite of kings and commoners. You didn't need those credentials, however, to dabble in early myth and legend making.

Harry "The Bearcat" Starr died in 1921 after a career that included stints as a bank and train robber, a horse thief, an actor and a movie producer. Even while acting in a western movie in Oklahoma, he couldn't resist a little bank robbery on the side. Sort of keeping his hand in. It was his undoing. Claims that he was just scouting for movie locations did not meet with good reviews from critics.

Another outlaw who clearly saw the possibilities of the changing West was Emmett Dalton, of the infamous Dalton Gang.

Born in Cass County, Missouri, in 1871, Emmett tried being a lawman. It didn't take. With his brothers, Bob and Grat, he robbed just about anything containing money--banks, trains and faro games. They were equal opportunity bandits. In a burst of macho, the gang decided to go for a double hit. The targets were two plump banks in Coffeyville, Kansas. While it made a great movie scene years later, the original raid was a fiasco. Bob and Grat were killed, which spoiled it for Emmett, who was shot up and arrested. That was 1892. Despite receiving a life sentence, he was pardoned in 1907 and proceeded to lead the life of an honest man--up to a point.

Until his death in 1937, he dabbled in real estate and building and wrote movie scripts for the booming new industry in Hollywood. He even acted in a few. Westerns, of course. And, not surprisingly, he became a vigorous advocate of prison reform.

Some real cowboys achieved real fame on the silver screen. Buck Jones, born in 1889, spent his cowboy days on the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch in Oklahoma. In 1920, he starred in his first moving picture, The Last Straw. His trademark white hat became the traditional symbol for the Good Guy, which he was. The movie hero died as the real thing when he helped save lives during a fire at the Coconut Grove in 1942.

Tim McCoy, born in 1891, was another genuine cowboy to make it big in Hollywood. He was also considered a leading authority on Native American history, and began his film career as a technical advisor to Western filmmakers.

Tom Mix was the son of a captain in the celebrated U.S. Seventh Cavalry. He was a real, live Texas Ranger and later served as a scout in the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion in China. After a quick look at the Boer War in South Africa, he became a guide for President Teddy Roosevelt. He eventually came back to the Texas Rangers, served as a U.S. Marshal in Arizona and, finally, joined the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He started making Westerns in 1918, and eventually was drawing down $10,000 a week. He died in an auto wreck in Arizona in 1940--on his way to Hollywood to discuss a movie deal.

Other famous names in Western mythology owe their modern popularity to the wizardry of Hollywood, despite never having appeared before a camera.

The dapper William B. "Bat" Masterson, complete with cane, derby hat, theme song and television show, actually died at his desk in the offices of the New York Morning Telegraph in New York City in 1921. At age 68, the former Kansas lawman and gambler was a sports writer and fight promoter.

Harry Longabaugh, who really didn't look much like Robert Redford, was better known by his nickname--the Sundance Kid. One of the stalwarts of the Wild Bunch, the last great Western outlaw gang, he died (maybe) in a shootout with the Bolivian army in 1908 just about the way the movie claimed. That was the same year that Pat Garrett, the lawman who killed Billy the Kid, was killed, himself.

The fate of the Sundance Kid's partner, Robert LeRoy Parker--Butch Cassidy (who did look a lot like Paul Newman)--wasn't as simple. Popular movies aside, Cassidy lived the last three decades of his life as a respected, though slightly mysterious, producer of adding machines and office equipment. Or so they say. As William T. Phillips, the affable outlaw died in Spangle, Washington, in 1937. He was 71. At the time of his death, he, too, was trying to market a movie script about the life and times of one of the West's last great bandits.

Harry Logan--Kid Curry--another member of Cassidy's Wild Bunch, also confused the issue of his demise. Some say he died in a train robbery in 1904. Others claim he joined Butch and Sundance in Bolivia and died in a shootout there about 1910 or 1911. Either way, it's doubtful that he took time to write a movie script.

Texas John Slaughter was another lawman who spanned the time from the Civil War to the first World War. He died peacefully at the age of 80, a respected Douglas, Arizona, cattleman, in 1922. Fifty years later, he lived again briefly in a popular Disney television venture.

Some legendary Westerners touched the entertainment industry very briefly, only to live forever on film. Consider the James boys, founding family of the Western outlaw culture.

Frank James, older brother of Jesse (who created a whole new cottage industry by staging the first peacetime bank robbery), spent his final years working race tracks at county fairs and running a Wild West show with former outlaw colleague Cole Younger. He eventually became something of a show business celebrity and attraction in traveling theater stock companies. After his death in 1915, his ashes were kept in a vault--probably at a bank he'd knocked over on more than one occasion--until his wife's death in 1944. They were interred together in a Kansas City cemetery.

In Cimarron, New Mexico, in the mid-1970s, Fred Lambert died. A local character and storyteller, he claimed to have been a New Mexico Ranger and to have shot it out with Cassidy's Wild Bunch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. He may have. He also claimed that his godfather was Buffalo Bill Cody. Which he was. In his last years, he opened a museum in an old grist mill in the dusty Santa Fe Trail town of Cimarron. It was dedicated to Western history. Lambert was probably the most important and popular artifact. It was as close to show biz as he got.

Then there was Thomas H. Rynning, a lawman who rode with the Eighth U.S. Cavalry in the final campaign against Geronimo. After a stint with Cody's Wild West show, he got out of entertainment completely. In 1907, he was appointed superintendent of the Territorial Prison at Yuma, Arizona. He died six months before the United States entered the second World War. He was 75.

With movies like Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, the myth-making process begun by men like Cody and Earp, Mix and McCoy, continues.

Westerners like it. They are reminded that their history and the myths they have created around it are unique. No other region of the country can boast of anything quite like it. In New England, Westerners point out, history stopped in 1776, and in Dixie "before the Wah" is still the determining factor in establishing historic value.

The West is young, its myths still growing, its larger-than-life heroes still alive, striding tall, grim and purposeful across the silver screen in legends that have become fact.

Like Tombstone, they're simply too tough to die--and, with a bag of buttered popcorn in your lap, too much fun to ignore.

Pictured here is W.Bro. Bill Greenen who is doing his best to instruct Jack Melin on how to use his Web Site to publish our Lodge Trestle Board. We thank Brother Bill for his help and dedication to the Craft.